The Echoing Stones

by Celia Fremlin

  The silence was total. Well, no, not quite total; there was a sound of breathing, but that was all. Was this the “Heavy Breathing” described by such women as seemed prone to have this sort of thing happen to them? Well, “prone” was perhaps unkind, but the fact remained that some women go on and on about it and finally go ex-directory, whereas others don’t. There must be something that makes the difference.

  “Hullo?” he said again; and then, “Have you put your money in? Have you pressed Button A?”

  Still no answer. Still the breathing continued. Rather soft breathing, he’d have said, though maybe to female ears it might sound “Heavy”? Curiosity stirring, he held on: what did these chaps say? He had never been able to get a clear account from any of the ladies reporting such victimisation, one and all they were far too shocked, shy or well-brought-up to repeat the words in question. So now here was his chance. The only one he’d ever get, probably. It occurred to him that he didn’t know many obscene words, only about four or five. Were there any more? He held on, wondering if he was about to learn something.

  But no. After a few more moments a soft click at the other end of the line told him that the interchange, such as it was, was over.

  It was unsettling. It could, of course, be some sort of a fault at the Exchange, but inevitably, at this hour of the night and in his situation of total solitude, more sinister interpretations floated unstoppably into his mind. Thieves, checking on whether anyone was on duty before descending on the place? Or – worse – checking that there was only one of him and therefore an easy target for gagging, kidnapping, murdering? Would they threaten him with torture if he refused to hand over the keys? Torture would assuredly be no novelty within these ancient walls – how would he stand up to it? Worse, he felt sure, than even the veriest scullion of those ancient times. Such stamina they had! The weights they could carry, the distances they could walk, the toothaches they endured without dentists, the amputations without anaesthetics! Arnold felt himself to belong to an enfeebled, altogether inferior generation.

  Gradually, it became clear that he wasn’t, after all, to be put to the test. The racing of his heart slowed down and he realised how silly he was being. Nothing was happening. No one was threatening to torture him. The keys were safe in their proper place, hanging on their hook at the head of his bed. It was the best part of half an hour now since that telephone call. If they had decided to break into the place, they’d be here by now.

  All the same, he felt too tensed-up, too wary, simply to go back to bed again. Soon it would be five o’clock, and soon after that the first glimmer of dawn would appear over the dark tops of the trees beyond the park. He decided to bring on the day just a mite early by getting dressed and making a pot of tea. Once you’ve done that, as everyone knows, tomorrow is as good as there.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Saturday dawned cloudless and sunny, as predicted in the forecast, but somewhat cooler than hitherto. Already there was a hint of autumn in the air and when Arnold set off, very early, along the gravel walk towards the Tea Room, a thin white mist shot through with golden lights still hovered above the dew-drenched lawns. Today, he was determined that the Tea Room should be open, come what may. He couldn’t possibly risk the flood of complaints that would certainly reach the ears of Them, if the place was closed yet again, and on Saturday of all days.

  Besides, the auspices were on the whole favourable. He himself was going to be relatively free this afternoon, two of the Tourist guides from the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft at Danehurst having agreed to help him out this afternoon. Thus, if the worst came to the worst, he could give a hand with serving the teas himself, though he didn’t at all like doing so. It was beneath his dignity, and also he wasn’t much good at it; couldn’t skim along balancing the laden trays on the flat on one hand the way the girls could, bless them.

  Bless them provisionally, anyway. They had promised, absolutely promised, that they would turn up this afternoon – though how much difference there was between promising and absolutely promising had yet to be ascertained.

  Still, at the moment it looked hopeful; and reaching the entrance to the Tea Room, Arnold took out his knife and carefully un-pinned the “CLOSED” notice that had been up all yesterday afternoon. He was anxious to complete this operation before Norris came on duty, and stood about watching the furtive deed and making snide remarks about some people having it easy and not knowing they’re born: that sort of thing. Arnold didn’t think that Norris would actually report him for his defection over the Tea Room, because if he did, then what was to stop Arnold from reporting the mysterious disappearance of all the best fruit from the kitchen garden as fast as it became ripe?

  Not that Arnold would report it, but Norris wasn’t to know that, was he?

  As it happened, the problem didn’t arise. Norris was nowhere to be seen. Well, he wouldn’t be, would he, it wasn’t yet seven o’clock, and so Arnold was able to take down the notice unobserved and hide it away beneath the counter all ready for some future unfortunate occasion. After this he set in place the tables, all fifteen of them, for the expected visitors. Slightly inexpertly, he spread the blue-and-white check cloths and set out the crockery, and the silly little vases of articificial flowers. He’d never liked them and neither had Mildred, but fresh flowers were out of the question, pressed for time as they always were.

  It seemed to be Arnold’s lucky day. Pauline and Tracey turned up, both of them, right on time, and the two guides from the Magic and Witchcraft place also turned up; ladies far from young, but effervescing with good will and energy, though one of them had left her handbag on the bus. Neither Magic nor Witchcraft were much help here and she couldn’t work the payphones either, so Arnold had to ring up the bus station for her, which took up quite a bit of his precious time.

  Still, it all worked out in the end, and though the information purveyed by the Witchcraft ladies couldn’t, in Arnold’s opinion, stand up to even the most cursory of historical scrutiny, it was nevertheless inordinately popular and drew the crowds in a most satisfactory way. This left Arnold free to supervise the opening of the Tea Room, and in particular to unwrap and put on display the supermarket cakes and biscuits which he had dashed into town to buy that same morning. This had been his habit ever since Mildred, and with her the option of home-made scones, had disappeared. It had seemed to him the only possible solution to his problem, though an extravagant one, leaving no profit margin at all. Sometimes, too, as he clawed and tore and wrenched at the plastic packaging, he wondered whether the system saved any time, either? These Chocolate-Coconut Fancies, for example, each of them done up in a tight little plastic parcel which itself nested in its own personalised compartment of a hermetically-sealed plastic container of savage toughness and impenetrability. It was like a fortress specially designed by the military to withstand assualt by scissors, penknife or carving-knife; and as he jabbed and wrenched, Arnold found himself indulging in a time-and-motion vision of Mildred and her mixing-bowl. All she’d seemed to need was a big wooden spoon with which she effortlessly stirred everything around, and, hey presto, there were four dozen freshly-baked scones, all ready to serve. And she hadn’t had to drive into town first and find somewhere to park. Women had it easy …

  However, with the help of Pauline and Tracey, who were young enough never to have known any other way of getting at food, and whose nimble fingers were therefore totally adapted to the task, the job did get done.

  By opening-time too; and so Arnold was free to wander out into the sushine with no future duties for the time being. No specific duties, that is. Naturally he had to keep an eye on things, see that nothing went spectacularly wrong, and that the visitors who seemed unable to read signs like EXIT and TOILETS and DO NOT FEED THE FISH were correctly guided and admonished. And then there were the lost children, of course. The matching-up of parents with children trying not to be found was only a little more difficult that the matching-up of lost and crying toddlers with parents a
lready too hysterical to think straight. If the worst came to the worst, he dumped the tinies on Joyce, who sat them behind the counter and let them play with the ticket-dispenser during the slack times when it wasn’t dispensing.

  *

  The success of the Magic and Witchcraft ladies was really most gratifying. Watching the crowds surging up, bemused and happy, from the dungeon, which was where the standard tour ended, Arnold wondered whether he shouldn’t try and pick up some hints from the two of them? Never had his guided tours attracted such numbers. And it wasn’t just retired couples and family parties, either. Lots of really young people seemed to have opted for this tour, and from the buzz of eager conversation that came to Arnold’s ears it seemed that they had been impressed. It takes a lot to impress the young – or at least this had always been Arnold’s experience – and so he listened attentively to see what clues he could pick up.

  “No, it did move, I saw it! No, it couldn’t have been a trick of the lighting, because …”

  “The chains, that’s what got me! I nearly screamed when …”

  “I don’t really believe all that about the toads, but all the same …”

  His eye was caught by a slight female figure that seemed somehow familiar. The slim, golden-brown legs, the psychedelic shorts, the mass of coppery corkscrew hair falling around a face all-but concealed by enormous sun-glasses – in all this the girl was much like a dozen others, but all the same …

  It can’t be! Oh no! It can’t!

  Yes it can! Oh my God, it is!

  Arnold’s mouth fell open as his daughter languidly approached him, smiling, so far as he could judge, what with the hair and the sun-glasses, and what with her face (as much as was visible of it) being puckered-up against the sudden sunlight outside the dungeon. It was a long time since Flora had actually smiled at her father, but – yes, it was a smile. Must be, her teeth were showing, anyway, he’d have recognised them anywhere, so white and even and beautiful. He’d always been proud of Flora’s teeth and how, when she was eleven, the dentist had said they were the finest set he’d ever seen, no fillings anywhere.

  “Hi, Arnold!” In that first moment of recognition, he’d somehow hoped she was going to say “Hi, Dad!” But of course it was a long time since she’d called him “Dad”. How one forgets.

  “Hullo, Flora,” should have been an easy thing to say, but somehow it wasn’t. Partly the shock, of course – for what could have been more unlikely than that his all-but-estranged daughter should have exerted herself to come and visit him in this out-of-the-way place? But partly also, because he couldn’t yet guess her mood, and, with Flora, the mood she happened to be in was of crucial importance. “Hullo” could be just the wrong thing to say, and might set off such a train of recriminations as it would be beyond his power to cope with, especially without Mildred at his side to draw some of the fire.

  *

  However, he must have said something, for not many minutes later here they were, the two of them, en route for the Tea Room. Here, for once, he was to enjoy the experience of being the customer instead of the harassed manager or emergency tea-dispenser.

  It was Pauline who served them, pop-eyed with curiosity as to how so dried-up an old stick as her boss could have picked up so trendy a bird as this one with her psycho shorts and designer glasses. He decided not to disabuse Pauline, not for the moment. Let her guess. Both she and Tracey had been showing signs of flagging when he’d entered the restaurant, and unsatisfied curiosity is always a fine pick-me-up as any observant employer knows.

  Seated opposite one another at one of the small tables, the vase of artificial flowers between them, conversation between Flora and her father did not flow easily. Arnold did not dare ask his daughter direct questions, such as “Well, how are you getting on?” as that way serious altercation lay: How do you think I’m getting on in this rotten, polluted, clapped-out world that your generation has handed on to me? It was all very well for you, you never had to contend with unemployment, inflation, housing shortages, rapacious landlords, hospital waiting-lists …

  That sort of thing. And when, nettled beyond endurance, Arnold would point out that he and Mildred had had to contend with all these things, and also with a childhood of bombs, evacuation and food-rationing – then, of course, a major row would develop. “Whinging about the War!” Flora would accuse “Your generation seem never to have come out of their Anderson shelters, or even to have stuck their heads out far enough to have a peek at the modern world!” and if he then tried to explain to her, quietly, what it had been like, she would laugh that loud, affected laugh of hers and become even more sarcastic; downright rude, sometimes, to such an extent that there would be no option but to reprove her. Which of course would at once cast him in the rôle of tyrannical father, chauvinist pig and monster of sexist oppression.

  Arnold was determined, on this occasion, to avoid provoking this all-too-familiar scene. After all, here she was, she had come to see him of her own accord. It would be a shame to let the whole thing degenerate into a dreary family wrangle. The important thing was to keep off controversial subjects; but since Flora had this unhappy knack of turning every subject into a controversial subject, he felt quite at a loss.

  Hence the silence brooding between them, broken only by occasional uneasy platitudes. What could Pauline be thinking now, he wondered, as she whisked by with her trays of food and observed them facing each other in glum silence across the blue and white check cloth and the plate of untouched Fancies? Perhaps he should have revealed to her that his sullen companion was only his daughter and not a spectacularly unsuccessful pick-up. That he was a failed parent, not a failed Lothario. Which was the least humiliating of the two rôles?

  Nibbling at his Chocolate Coconut Fancy – after all that effort it wasn’t even very nice, much too sweet, and kind of scented – Arnold ventured an occasional glance across the table, trying to assess, since he dared not ask her, what she was here for? What was her motive for turning up like this? Simple daughterly concern for her father’s welfare? This seemed out of the question, and so Arnold did not waste any speculation on it. Money, then? This was what had mostly brought her home in the past: getting behind with her rent, or missing-out on her Social Security benefits on account of some anomaly in her situation beyond the range of any ordinary person’s I.Q. Or, sometimes, she would turn up because she was homeless – thrown out of somewhere, or not allowed back into somewhere, because she’d fallen-out with somebody. Something sordid, anyway, the contemplation of which made Arnold miserable. Had Flora’s periodic financial crises been due to wild spending-sprees, or crazy holidays at the ends of the earth, it wouldn’t have been nearly so bad. He wouldn’t have minded having a daughter like that.

  Cautiously, under warily-raised eyelids, he looked at the daughter he had got and was filled with dread. If she’d been thrown out of the squat, or the squat had disintegrated under the weight of its own squalor, then she’d be looking for a roof over her head. His roof. But for how long? Just for the night or – here his heart missed a beat – was she planning to come and live here?

  The possibility that this might actually be the case filled him with panic. How on earth was he going to cope with his job as well as with Flora permanently in the flat?

  An enormous sadness swept over him. This was his daughter, for heaven’s sake! Why could he not be feeling (as surely a father should feel) thank goodness she’s come! Now I shall get some help, some sympathy, and above all another pair of hands!

  If only he had a daughter about whom he could feel like that. “It’s too much for you, Daddy,” this fantasy daughter would have exclaimed. “You must let me help you. I could come down every weekend, get the Tea Room properly organised … make batches of cakes and scones for the whole week. I could serve the teas on Saturdays when you’re so busy. I could teach Pauline and Tracey to do their job properly – or maybe we’d find we didn’t need them once I was here …”

  A pipe-dream, of cour
se. Things just weren’t like that nowadays, and Arnold knew it. Because it wasn’t just Flora, though maybe she was an extreme case. Arnold had over the years heard enough about his colleagues’ families to know that his own problems and anxieties were far from untypical. Far from seeing their grown children as a support for their old age, today’s parents tend to see them as an on-going burden, a potential focus of worry, trouble and expense until the end of time. No wonder the parents of today have given up being possessive and instead cannot wait to see the back of their grown-up offspring. Often they make a virtue of necessity, priding themselves on their non-possessive attitude, and claiming to be bestowing on their children all the glorious freedom that they in their youth were denied. How unselfish we are, they think, compared with our possessive forebears!

  But actually it’s not like that at all, Arnold reflected. The reason that parents of previous generations were possessive was not that they were more selfish than we are, but quite simply because children in those days were some use. They were an asset in the home, not a liability. They helped, they lent a hand; by and large they expected to do what their parents told them. No wonder the parents wanted to hang onto them. Who wouldn’t?

  And it was at this point, just as if she had been listening to her father’s unspoken thoughts, that Flora suddenly burst into speech.

  “Look, Arnold,” she said (did she know how very much he’d have preferred to be addressed as “Dad”?) “Look, I want to know where I stand. Now that you and Mildred have chosen to bust our family into smithereens, what happens to me? Where am I supposed to live?”

  “Well, Flora dear …” He paused, trying to think how to put it. “We thought – well, naturally we thought – that you’d be living away from home. After all, you’ve been on your own for nearly three years. Moving out and going to live in a squat was your idea, not ours …”